On the other hand, the tendency to pass judgment on the behavior of others, puritanism, a rigid code, etc. sometimes can work to the benefit of people:
<blockquote>Dr. Himmelstein, as a panel respondant, offered remarks on the importance of unconventional thought and a diversity of approaches to building a movement for a single-payer health system -- just as the diversity of patients demands a diversity of doctors. He told a story of a patient, a smoker, who had suffered a heart attack. After the episode subsided, the patient went to see a cardiologist. The cardiologist asked if the patient had quit smoking. The patient replied that he had smoked for decades and had no intention of quitting just because he had had a heart attack. The cardiologist, an intense and excitable man, began jumping up and down, swearing at the patient and yelling words to the effect that he would "not take care of a goddamned smoker." This so frightened the man that he quit smoking -- "which is either brilliant medicine or utter malpractice," Dr. Himmelstein concluded.
<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/coates050106.html></blockquote>
The proportion of smokers has declined rapidly and dramatically: "Adult smoking rates have been cut nearly in half between 1965 and 2002, from 42.4 percent to 22.5 percent, and per capita consumption of tobacco products has fallen more than half, from 4,345 cigarettes in 1963 to 1,979 cigarettes in 2002" (<http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/ overview/anniversary.htm>). It's doubtful that the decline is thanks only to diffusion of scientific knowledge. (Why? Americans are poorer at science than many other nations, but they appear better at quitting smoking than most. . . .)
Even moralists have their place in a broad left. . . .
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>